Forest Water Ecosystems

'A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.' 'A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above.' 'Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface ofthe earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh; - a mirror in which all impurity presented to its sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush, - this the light dust-cloth, - which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still.' (Henry David Thoreau: 'Walden; or Life in the Woods'. Fourth printing, April 1953, Ri!lehart & Company, New York).